Aircraft Interior Expo: It’s A Wrap Up

Venice-Treviso Airport Closes For The SummerMIAMI – Italy’s Venice-Treviso Airport (TSF) is set to suspend operations through the summer season to optimize its system and resources as it records a 95% drop in traffic. The...

Conviasa Airbus A340-200 Lands In Rome (FCO)MIAMI – On May 20, 2020, another flight was authorized to allow compatriots who registered on the Italian Embassy website to return to their home country. The competent authorities permitted...

Aircraft Interior Expo: It’s A Wrap Up

The annual Aircraft Interiors Expo (AIX) took place last week in Hamburg, Germany. The world’s largest trade show of its type hosted hundreds of vendors, equipment suppliers and designers whose aim is to make your flight more pleasurable while making airline service more profitable.

We’ll take you through some of the biggest news of the week:

Gogo announced that the company was chosen by Airbus as a lead supplier; their 2Ku Wi-Fi systems will offer line-fit installation during the final assembly on the A320 series, A330 and A380 aircraft types.

“We are proud to be selected by Airbus as a supplier for Airbus’ high bandwidth connectivity program and look forward to working with them to provide our industry leading 2Ku solution to their customers,” says Anand Chari, executive vice president and CTO at Gogo. “The selection is acknowledgment of the traction we’ve made with 2Ku in the marketplace. It’s also validation of the long-term viability of this technology and its ability to serve commercial aviation for the foreseeable future.” Gogo has commitments to install 2Ku on over 1,500 aircraft worldwide.

Air Asia Group CEO, Tony Fernandes said, “Our guests will be able to enjoy extra fast internet connectivity as well as free movies, music, articles and games on our ROKKI IFEC platform. Not only that, they can shop for meals, merchandise and duty-free from the comfort of their own seats, which also allows us to better understand what our guests want so we can continue to improve on our in-flight offering.”

NEXT is a scalable system, meaning airlines can pick and choose the features they want to offer to customers, such as 4K video content, or the ability to request a movie prior to the flight and have it uploaded to the IFE system. Passengers could also take content home with them and finish the movie or show they were watching it by using the airline’s companion app.

JPA says the design will “evoke the natural splendor” of the island chain, and will feature some unexpected textures. Signs in the cabin will be in Hawaiian and English, and interior lighting will be designed to reflect Hawaii’s dramatic sunrises and sunsets. The airline’s A321neo fleet will have 16 First Class, 45 premium economy, and 128 economy seats. All seats will be supplied by B/E Aerospace.

Air New Zealand announced their selection of Series 6 economy seats by UK manufacturer Acro. Its design has a curved back, rather than a traditional flat back. The airline selected these seats for their thirteen forthcoming A320neo and five A321neo deliveries, set to begin in 2018.

Far away from the palatial booths of Zodiac and Recaro, Molon Labe displayed their Side-Slip Seat.

The Side-Slip Seat works by pressing a button on the aisle seat of each row, sliding it inward toward the window, and overlapping the middle seat during boarding. The company says their seat can trim boarding times by as much as twenty percent (20%). Another key feature of the seat row is that the middle seat is slightly lower and staggered back from the window and aisle seats, giving each passenger their own dedicated arm rest space. The middle seat could be as wide as 21 inches, which would make it the widest economy seat on the market.

Lufthansa Technik was performing demonstrations of their new Induction Cooking Platform. The modular technology of the platform allows airlines to make freshly-cooked meals onboard for premium passengers, rather than re-heating something prepared in a catering kitchen several hours before the flight.

They’ve also designed a unique fume hood and odor filtration system, so as not to make the passengers in the back of the plane too jealous. At one point in the show, LHT was seen preparing a lamb dish for Qatar Group CEO Akbar Al Baker.

A start-up company called Germ Falcon was demonstrating a quick and hygienic way to kill up to 99.99% of germs found on aircraft, using Ultra-Violet light.

A rolling device roughly the size and shape of a trolley cart would be pushed down the aircraft row, with its “wings” casting UV light over the seats, tray tables and arm rests, sanitizing the surfaces with the same technology that has been used in hospitals for several years now. The Germ Falcon was nominated for a Crystal Cabin Award in the Greener Cabin, Health, Safety & Environment category this year.

The concept allows airlines to move unneeded rows of seats to the back of the cabin during instances of low demand, creating more legroom for the remaining rows. The seats are moved out of the way along a sliding track. This joint concept with Airbus, Recaro and THK won a prestigious Crystal Cabin Award in the Passenger Comfort / Hardware category this year at AIX.

The new Delta One Business Class by Thompson Aero won the Crystal Cabin Award for best new Cabin Concept, beating out the new United Polaris by Acumen / Zodiac and the Bombardier C Series Cabin. The new Delta One Suite is the industry’s first business class with privacy doors at every seat. It will debut later this year coinciding with the delivery of Delta’s first A350 aircraft.